Friday, 29 March 2013

More deliberately misleading claims about autonomous education

We looked yesterday at the case of a child who was taught to read and then advertised as having just ‘picked up’ reading spontaneously. This sort of thing can have a bad effect upon parents who are thinking of home educating, because it gives them an unrealistic idea of what home education entails. It has caused some parents to simply wait for their children to start reading; having formed the impression that this is something which happens naturally as a matter of course. Here is a typical example of such a dupe. This mother’s account of her children’s education was until recently to be found on the Education Otherwise site as an inspiration to others! Here she is, talking of her seven and ten year old children, both of whom are functionally illiterate;‘Their days are often filled with television and lots of play…They will read one day and will do so because they want to, not because somebody tells them to.’Here is a mother who is simply waiting for her children to ‘pick up’ reading. She has been gulled into this foolish course of action by misleading accounts such as that at which we looked yesterday.Another type of deception is that practiced by those who pretend that their children were pretty backward in various subjects and then suddenly made great leaps at a late age; thus catching up and even overtaking conventionally schooled children of the same age. We hear of children who could not read until the age of twelve or who were hopeless at maths until they were thirteen and then in the space of a few years made up for lost time and went to university. Almost invariably, there is more to these cases too than meets the eye.Two home education success stories which have been doing the rounds now for years and are still regularly trotted out, are the autonomously educated boys; one of whom got into Oxford to study law and the other who went to Manchester to study bio-chemistry. The second of these cases is an absolute classic in deception on the part of the child’s mother and I have recently come across an interesting letter from her dating back to 2007. Here it is;'The “inspectors” quoted in the BBC article completely do not understand autonomous education, which is practiced by at least one in four home educators in Britain. Autonomous education is child led, with parents facilitating, not dictating and allowing the child to retain the urge to educate themselves, the drive which leads them to teach themselves to walk and talk, and by not supressing that urge allowing them to learn all they need to know to get on in the world they live in. To the LA advisors, this is so far away from the regulated, prescribed curriculums that make up their world, that they see it as no educational provision, because unless the child decides structure is the way they wish to learn, there is often no external way to assess the child’s education. My two children have been lucky enough to decide on their own education, and an inspector making judgements about my son at 13 would have been horrified at this child who had not yet decided writing was an important thing in his life, or maths. However my son was recently the youngest entrant ever at the Manchester School of Medicine’s PhD programme, following his degree.'What are we to make of this? Well, the mother wants us to believe that her autonomously educated son was not too hot at maths at the age of thirteen and that a local authority inspector would have been horrified at his standard in this subject. But then look what happened; he went on to become the youngest ever entrant at the Manchester School of Medicine! Curious that she omits to mention that the boy had already passed a GCSE in mathematics at the age of twelve, three or four years earlier than the usual age that this is taken in schools. The reality is that far from being horrified at his attainment in maths, any inspector would have been extremely impressed. This can hardly have been an innocent mistake on the part of the mother; she knew perfectly well when she was talking about how horrified an inspector would have been, that her son took his GCSE in this subject at twelve. She tells us here that he had not, at the age of thirteen, decided that maths was an important thing in his life, when in fact he chose to pursue the subject and take a GCSE in it at twelve!The result of this sort of deceit is that parents whose teenagers are not doing well at maths or reading are lulled into believing that it does not matter. Just look! Here is a child who is a complete duffer at maths when he is thirteen and then a year later, he is studying it at A level! In the course of a year, he has caught up with and overtaken the fourteen year-olds at school. Nonsense like this can be very damaging for parents who don’t realise that they should actually be concerned about children unable to read at twelve or carry out basic arithmetical operations at thirteen. They are enabled to kid themselves that some miracle will happen and that their children will soon catch up without any teaching on their part. Why does this bother me? I am hugely enthusiastic about home education. At the moment there are tens of thousands of home educated children in this country, but I would like to see the practice increase at least tenfold. I wish that hundreds of thousands of parents would take full responsibility for the education of their children and reject schools entirely. Educating children though is a full-time task and unless parents are prepared to devote their lives to it for ten or fifteen years, then they had better not attempt it at all. Those who undertake the enterprise believing that their children will be hopeless at maths at the age of thirteen and then suddenly whiz ahead and be at A level standard a year later, all under their own steam, are in for a terrible shock. Untruthful and deliberately misleading reports such as those we have looked at over the last few days are not helping matters. They present a distorted and wholly unrealistic view of home education. Any parents who decide to home educate after having read stuff like this are being set up to fail. Worse still, their children are being primed for failure and that really does bother me.

39 comments:

'They present a distorted and wholly unrealistic view of home education. Any parents who decide to home educate after having read stuff like this are being set up to fail. Worse still, their children are being primed for failure and that really does bother me.'

It all depends on your definitions of success and failure and whether you think your children will need to earn a substantial income in order to feel happy and fulfilled. If you do think this then yes, you had better start hot-housing them, the earlier the better.

But if, on the other hand, you think they stand a better chance of succeeding in the happiness and fulfillment stakes by focusing on pleasing themselves and following their whims wherever these might take them, then stick with autonomy throughout.

I contend that it would be a rare child, with completely free choice in his activities, who would choose to do and learn nothing useful (for himself) at all.

'It all depends on your definitions of success and failure and whether you think your children will need to earn a substantial income in order to feel happy and fulfilled. '

This has nothing at all to do with earning a substantial income. We have always been poor as church mice and I dare say that our children will be as well! However, a young person unable to work out percentages in her head will end up being cheated. One who is not a fluent reader will be unable to learn what is happening in the world. It is things like this which are important; not earning a big salary.

Being autonomously home educated does not preclude teaching or learning. All of my children were taught how to read and do percentages by me when they asked and wanted to be. They have grown up with varying degrees of literacy and numeracy, as schooled children do. None have failed to learn anything crucial or been cheated or kept ignorant due to lack of basic skills.

My children have some friends who were deliberately taught nothing - a philosophy I do not share. But these friends also grew up to be literate and numerate due to living in the world of literacy and numeracy, in which the grasp of such skills is in the end unavoidable, even by accident. They work, earn money and are not cheated.

I agree with you that it is more helpful for children to be taught, but I perhaps have more faith in their inherent wish to learn, provided they stay in control of that process. I have no fear that any child in a modern home environment will miss basic skills through not being specifically compelled to learn them and disagree strongly with you on this.

But for a sure and complete set of qualifications after being home-educated throughout, I do agree with you that the parent needs to hot-house, and do it well. Or send the child to school as a young teenager, as many home educators do.

'But for a sure and complete set of qualifications after being home-educated throughout, I do agree with you that the parent needs to hot-house, and do it well. Or send the child to school as a young teenager, as many home educators do.'

Is that what he said? Simon has often laughed at the suggestion he 'hot-housed'. It's interesting that some people think the only alternative to AE is hot housing. My kids got a full set of qualifications after being home educated throughout but none needed any hot housing.

I did not say a child could not do this. Obviously they can and often do, but it is not a given that they will. But by the same token even very schooled and hot-housed young adults have been known to drop out in mid-course. There are no guarantees of anything, whichever route you take. You just have to decide what is important to you and focus on that.

'Being autonomously home educated does not preclude teaching or learning. All of my children were taught how to read and do percentages by me when they asked and wanted to be. They have grown up with varying degrees of literacy and numeracy, as schooled children do. None have failed to learn anything crucial or been cheated or kept ignorant due to lack of basic skills'

I'm sure that that is true. I was drawing attention yesterday and today not to the shortcomings of autonomous education as such, but rather to those parents who mislead others by leaving vital parts out of their accounts of autonomous education, so that others cannot really see what has happened. In the first case, a parent taught a child to read in a conventional way and then claimed that the kid had just 'picked up' reading by himself. In the second, a mother pretends that her son was hopeless at mathematics at the age of thirteen, whereas in reality he had already passed a GCSE in the subject when he was twelve. This sort of thing gives a false impression of autonomous education and can lead parents who are considering it to believe that it is really easy and that no effort is involved. I am sure that we both know that this is not the case!

Yes I share your abhorrence of such trickery, if that's what it was, for all the reasons you state in the main post. I have known children who have self-directedly moved from fully free ranged home education into more structured courses of study, usually at a school or college but sometimes home based. This is often very successful but even their initial decision to undertake a course is by no means to be relied upon.

Anecdotal evidence and personal experience (there is, of course, no statistical research) tells me it's probably equally likely that a child educated with full autonomy will opt not to undertake that sort of conventional goal-orientated activity and families must be prepared for this outcome, if they stick to their autonomous theory.

There is another element to this debate that has not yet been mentioned though, which is the power of role-modelling. Time and again I have seen older children subconsciously emulating their parents' activities to the extent that I now think this is a far more successful form of parental guidance than anything more consciously deliberate.

So if you want your child to become a maths teacher, the best chance of that outcome might be to go and become one yourself. I don't know for sure if this is more or less reliable than direct coercion, but my guess is that it would stand a better chance of success.

Better still in my view, is to 'follow your own dreams', to use a hippy phrase you probably despise, to the best of your ability. This will then inspire and encourage your children to do the same. Having a pre-set idea of the terms of success for another person, even or perhaps especially your own child, is probably never a good idea for either party.

“Here is a mother who is simply waiting for her children to ‘pick up’ reading.”

You are deliberately using an article that is no longer available online to mislead and trick your readers. As you so often do, you are selectively quoting and and have avoided including the mother's descriptions of a literacy and learning rich, well resourced environment. The mother also described various learning experiences including the beginnings of reading, one of the children frequently asking their mother for spellings, for instance. The mother said that she was aware they were learning to read and write through observation of their activities and questions. It's very unfair to quote an article without being able to give a link to the whole to allow people to make their own judgements, especially when you are so partial with your quotes.

She also gave links to various articles that covered her style of education in more detail. Here are some quotes from the sites she gave links to:

"we have a family culture that values games and word play, where phonics awareness sometimes seems to permeate the very air"

"We played a lot of games - bought games, homemade games, made up on the spot verbal games. I read aloud for hours while she looked at the pages. She asked questions and I answered. I pointed out interesting signs. She pointed out interesting signs. Her dad recorded tapes of him reading her favorite bedtime books so she could listen to them while he was away at sea."

"At our house, we look at books as being just about as important as food to eat and air to breathe. We get excited over them, we drag them everywhere, we talk about them, we give them as presents, we ooh and aah over the illustrations, we read bits and pieces out loud to each other,"

"She asked questions about letters and words, she followed along in books as I was reading, she started reading signs, we played rhyming games, she started asking me how to spell words, and, pretty soon, she was reading."

"Children who are learning to read usually want to create the written word, too, right along with learning to read it. So we provide lots and lots of writing materials. We include good quality colored pencils, crayons, markers, stampers, stickers, stencils, paint, and anything else that might be fun to draw or write with."

'You are deliberately using an article that is no longer available online to mislead and trick your readers'

I find myself unable to agree with you here. I have seen this account quoted in support of autonomous education and nobody batted an eyelid! Presumably, the mother was happy for Education Otherwise to us the account of her children's lives in this way. You are right about the links, but I'm afraid that I found the mother's description of her own children's lives appalling. She tells of a chaotic and disorganised home life and I am not the least bit surprised that her children did not learn to read. She was, as I said in the post today, essential just waiting for them to teach themselves.

Simon wrote,"I have seen this account quoted in support of autonomous education and nobody batted an eyelid!"

I'm not disputed that.

Simon wrote,"She was, as I said in the post today, essential just waiting for them to teach themselves."

Here I disagree and this is where you are misleading and tricking your readers by using a tiny, out of context, quote. It was clear in the full article that the mother was not, 'just waiting for them to teach themselves'. The article described a house full of books and resources; it described various learning experiences of the children that demonstrated they were learning to read.

The mother also gave links to descriptions of other articles that describe her style of HE. Now you may view these descriptions as chaotic and disorganised, but in my experience they are not experienced in this way by family members and they were effective, resulting in children learning to read. Obviously this lifestyle will not suit everyone, and likewise, your more organised, formal approach would not work for all families (it certainly failed for mine), but your dislike of such a lifestyle means little and is not evidence of anything.

'but your dislike of such a lifestyle means little and is not evidence of anything.'

I'm not at all sure that 'dislike' adequately expresses my feelings here. When I hear a mother talk of a couple of sixteen year-old as 'night owls' and says that they get up far later than she would like in the mornings; this is one thing. When this is said of a seven year-old and a ten year-old, I think that many people might be a little perturbed. When it emerges that these children are unable to read and that the mother has no plans to teach them, I do not think that simply saying that I 'dislike' this situation is the correct expression to use.

"When it emerges that these children are unable to read and that the mother has no plans to teach them, I do not think that simply saying that I 'dislike' this situation is the correct expression to use."

It's your opinion that this is what the article shows. I disagree. It's illogical to base a conclusion such as yours on the single line you quote without reference to other evidence in the article that reading and teaching was taking place. You are misleading and tricking your readers.

'So a ten year old has to be up early to meet with your approval, but a sixteen year old doesn't? I must be missing some part of the logic process here..'

As I say, I am not sure that this is really about my approval. Perhaps we just have different ideas on what constitutes a healthy life for young children. You see nothing wrong with children of seven and ten sitting up half the night watching television and then not rising until lunchtime. You also find it acceptable for children of that age not to be reading and for nobody having the intention to teach them. I have another view on the matter.

I am a different 'you' from the earlier one. I teach my children, go to bed early with them and get up early with them. I am not therefore questioning the healthiness and wisdom of these choices, but the inconsistency in your standards for ten year olds and sixteen year olds. Your standards: you stated them. You are making it about your approval.

'Is there a set age at which late sleeping becomes acceptable, then? 14? 15? 16? Or younger? Who decides this, and on what factors do they base the decision?'

An interesting point. One could substitute drinking alcohol, reading pornography, having sex or any number of other things for this question. I happen to think that seven year-olds are better served by having a different lifestyle from sixteen year-olds; others may disagree.

'So do you actually think that late bedtimes are comparable to sex, alcohol and pornography? Or are you deliberately misleading people again?'

I think that seven year-olds and sixteen year-olds need different lifestyles. I believe that what might be acceptable and indeed unremarkable in the life of a sixteen year-old, might raise eyebrows if seen in the life of a seven year-old. To give another example, I would see nothing wrong with a sixteen year-old walking the streets alone at midnight. I would not think it wise for a seven year-old to do so. I am aware that others do not agree with this and prefer to blur the boundaries of such differences.

It's you that is attempting to blur boundaries by comparing children staying up and rising late in a caring family environment to children drinking alcohol and having illegitimate sex. We allowed our children to stay up late and sleep as long as they needed largely so that they could spend quality time with their dad who arrived home at about 7pm. It contributed to an improved family life.

I struggle to see anything wrong/illegal/unsavoury with children going to bed at the same time as their parents and sleeping until they wake refreshed and ready to enjoy another day, and your attempts to portray it otherwise make me feel quite ill. It was one of the great advantages of HE as far as we were concerned. Can you give me one reason why this was bad for our children?

'"When it emerges that these children are unable to read and that the mother has no plans to teach them, I do not think that simply saying that I 'dislike' this situation is the correct expression to use."

No the mother does not say this, what she describes are children who have started the process of learning to read and write but are not yet independent readers. The mother says that she helps her children with spellings, provides writing materials, that her children are writing, and she observes that they are learning to read and write.

Nowhere in the article does she say that she will not teach them to read. She says she will follow their lead, which is not the same, especially when they are already writing and asking about spellings. The links further describe the style of HE she follows and included descriptions of word play, phonic awareness, verbal games, reading aloud to children, looking at and discussing signs, rhyming games, etc.

Your choice of a couple of phrases from a much longer article was calculated to mislead and trick your readers, in my opinion.

Simon said,“When I hear a mother talk of a couple of sixteen year-old as 'night owls' and says that they get up far later than she would like in the mornings; this is one thing. When this is said of a seven year-old and a ten year-old, I think that many people might be a little perturbed.”

For your reader’s interest and information, this is the relevant paragraph:

” A typical day in our house? It starts probably later than I would like. My older 2 are night owls and as I currently write this, the school holidays mean friends round, late nights and sleepovers. Thus today they got up at 10am.”

So they were sleeping particularly late at the time the article was written because of sleepovers with their friends who are on holiday from school. Shocking! Does this really justify your description of, 'a chaotic and disorganised home life'?

Simon said,“No, it is what the mother herself said [that her children could not read]”

What the mother actually said was:

” I guess inwardly I panicked when at 6 then 7 my daughters were not reading books… At 10 and 7 my eldest don't read books yet, though they are NOT illiterate… They can read and recognise a lot of words, and what is more have not been put off learning, as I would NEVER push them to do something they didn't want to do.

These children can 'read and recognise a lot of words', but you conclude that they cannot read. On the other hand, a 2 year old who can sound out the letters of the alphabet can read according to you. I suspect your measure of a child's reading ability depends on the argument you are currently making.

'I struggle to see anything wrong/illegal/unsavoury with children going to bed at the same time as their parents and sleeping until they wake refreshed and ready to enjoy another day, and your attempts to portray it otherwise make me feel quite ill.'

I too struggle to see this as wrong, illegal or unsavoury. I think that injudicious might be a more felicitous choice of word. I am constantly amazed at the almost pathological sensitivity displayed here. I can see somebody being irritated by another person holding a different view on appropriate childhood bedtimes, but made ill? Come, come, anonymous; do pull yourself together!

Oh you are funny, Simon. Of course I don't mind you thinking that we are injudicious. But you’re linking of late bedtimes with 7 year olds drinking alcohol and underage sex suggests much more than injudicious. Unless you really do consider sex at age 7 just to be injudicious?

Still struggle to see why it's unwise for a child to sleep between 10pm and 10am instead of 7pm and 7am. Especially as it means they see their father every day instead of just at the weekends.

'And then extrapolated from there that he could read at 6 because of this teaching for a couple of months at age 2.

As I am sure we both know, the mother actually stopped chronicling her son's life, at least on that site, in February 2004. This does not mean that all the activities that she was describing up until that point, the swimming and reading lessons for example, ended as soon as she stopped writing about them!

And conversely, we cannot assume that reading lessons continued in the same way for the following 4 years. What evidence we do have suggests that these methods were abandoned. The child was showing signs of beginning to reject them towards the end of the diary entries (furiously scribbling out the letters written in his book during these sessions) and this is also what the father says happened in the article.

'The child was showing signs of beginning to reject them towards the end of the diary entries (furiously scribbling out the letters written in his book during these sessions) and this is also what the father says happened in the article.'

Not really. The child was scribbling out the letters in December 2003. The following February, the mother was talking enthusiastically about how he knew every letter of the alphabet. There is no indication that she is going to stop teaching. i think that she was just too busy to continue keeping records; much the same thing happened with me when my child was two and a half. So much is happening at this age, that parents are often too busy educating the child, to write about it. Six years later, there was still no sign of an autonomous education. The mother was teaching biology, geography and mathematics, with little or no sign that the child had requested this. She had a curriculum. I spoke at length to people who spent a few days in the house and had a chance to see all the teaching materials there and also question the mother in detail. They were foxed as to the difference between her approach and mine and asked me to explain autonomous education to them. The parents had used the expression, but all they actually witnessed was conventional teaching according to a predetermined plan by one of the parents.

The two examples about the teaching at age 2 prove nothing. As I’ve said before, I could describe similar early experiences with my own children and then also describe starting again from scratch several years later because the previous activities had ended and the child had forgotten everything in the intervening years, just as the father describes in the newspaper article.

Having teaching materials in the home proves nothing anyway; we still have lots left over from our HE. Some of it was used, much of it was not. The father also mentions various subjects that they were currently teaching their child in the newspaper article, so the existence of books on subjects such as biology, geography and mathematics, isn't new information. I'm not stating categorically that they were (are?) not autonomous educators because I don't know the family, but you have certainly not provided enough evidence to prove they are not, and they certainly do not appear to have mislead anyone as you claim.

"The parents had used the expression, but all they actually witnessed was conventional teaching according to a predetermined plan by one of the parents."

Did they ask the child? That would be the only way to tell for sure, after all. Much of our AE would have looked conventional to an outsider looking in.